


Our Flame.

by fearless_seas



Series: The Three Trials of Jacky Ickx. [7]
Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:40:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25903714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fearless_seas/pseuds/fearless_seas
Summary: When Jacky's time comes, Ronnie will be there. Even as he has already been gone for decades before.
Relationships: Jacques "Jacky" Ickx/Ronnie Peterson
Series: The Three Trials of Jacky Ickx. [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1020141
Kudos: 3





	Our Flame.

You miss Ronnie everyday. 

No matter what you do. 

And on the days when you don’t… it comes another day like returning waves.

It’s a pang. A dull throb that resonates in the center of your breast. It pulsates with some foreign life; all the pieces of him within you, breathing memories into the cavern of your bones. You’ll rise a hand to your chest, rubbing over the area as though you were pain (and you are). You’ll ignore it as your paint your face in smiles and move about the world. Stranger faces in large crowds, those you’ll never see again; but in every blonde you see him and every set of blue eyes causes your gut to twist. 

This evening, the night swarms around you and you can feel him: his elbow resting on his shoulder and his silhouette across the table from you. On days such as these, you climb the stairs to your study. The pictures in your home are collages of color, of light and familiar faces hanging on the walls. Things only you have known. Maybe you’ll sweep your fingertips over a friend’s jaw or the unruly, dark hair of someone you once loved…

But none more so than Ronnie. 

You turn away and the room is busying itself with clouding your mind. You’ll catch a semblance of yourself in the faint glow of the mirror beside the window. A sliver of moonlight slips through the glass and the luminescence draws a pathway towards the closet at the far end. You bend on your knees and rummage through the dusty boxes. Frames of your children and old racing gadgets, mentos of this long life of yours. Your fingertip eventually catches on what you're searching for and you freeze, ripping your hand away as though it had burnt you. Your eyes shut and you sense Ronnie hanging behind you with a hand on your waist. He’s telling you:

_You don’t have to do this._

But you want to. 

And you don’t turn the light on as you tug out the box. It’s a large shoebox, aging and weathered with decades. It splinters in your hands and you set it on the ledge by the window where you crawl upwards to. You use the night stars as your lantern to glimpse through the blanket of darkness. It hits you immediately: filling you with a sudden occupied sensation. Like intoxication, or, maybe, how you'd always felt with him there. It’s opening the top of the box with trembling hands and knowing there were two periods of your life: the three trials you endured and everything after that. That familiar fragrance that arises into the air shall always be your weakness: it’s comfort, a home, what all beautiful things are composed of, you believe. Ronnie had always found a way to color outside of the lines. 

You feel your pulse in the pad of your finger as you set the top down and your hands are like the open sky waiting for weather. It’s filled with photos, scraps of clothing and broken cassettes of songs that remind you of him. You have the fabric of his uniform, the one with the etching of his name ripped and staring at your soul from below. You draw a slow breath, hold it and every inch of your skin quivers. Ronnie's there with you: pressing his lips to the column of your throat or writing in constellations he scrawled among the scars on your shoulders. You whisper to no one at all:

“I’ve missed this.”

You allow a few tears to fall until the sun rises. But nothing past that. When slight splashes over your skin, you place every piece of him you have left back into the box as though he were nothing at all. Just ashes in the wind or the melody humming in the distance beyond each sunset. Somedays it is like this, like clockwork, and you are filled with the undesirably need for him. Blonde like every pale moonshine or blue as the stars, the ones that swirl endlessly about in an eternally woven fabric of navy and gold. The sound of his voice, the scent of his cologne, the atmosphere of every awed laugh, the hue of his eyes, how tightly his clothes fit and the breathless spark his lively gaze fed to your flames. He had blown into your life and set all of the pieces of your shattered life back together. 

Somedays, you lift his shirt to your nose and the fabric is stained with a pattern of your tears. Others, you’ll manage a boundless smile over the photographs. The ones Ronnie engraved himself in scrawled etchings on the back.

_1974\. Jacky, in this one you’re pouting again._

_1975\. Lotus, Britain. You thought I looked nice in my suit._

_1976\. Spain. Nothing is as important as how the sea flowed over your cheeks._

_1978\. Us._

The last one makes the smile disappear. Maybe, because it's the last photo you ever took together. Ronnie has a hand on your waist, resting on the hip as though it belongs there. It feels natural, like he was born to place his palm there. He’s peering to you with admiration. _He’s so proud of you_. Arms that lifted you up to dance and fingers that filled the hair on the back of your neck. You believe that was your problem then: that you’d spent so long trying to attach petals onto your wilted flower. But, it happened, after years, he slipped towards you from a dream and reached for your hands like no one had ever done before. He stuffed a brand new daisy into the cusp of your palms. 

_Here_ , he mouthed with a smile, _start over_. 

You carry it in your heart still and it’s grown roots too deep to pluck clean. 

There is also a third type of day where you think of Ronnie. It comes after the storm; the endless melancholy and faltered smiles over cracked photographs. But it arrives always. You sense the ghost of his hand lingering on the small of your back. The sun moves through the curtains and the hallway is erupted in angelic light. The light points towards the first photo frame hung on the wall next to your books. It’s the first year he ever met you, his hair was shorter and his eyes wider. It eases a burden within you, a deep, malnourished sight that emerges dormant from your fragile lungs. It’s made of sadness and everything that you didn’t give him. 

There Ronnie is, constructed of happiness. And you’re feeling unborn. 

You raise a hand, your touch to the air. Your brushing fingertips press delicately to the ink. You rub your finger over it, caressing the beauty of his image. Your hands have wrinkles, stained with age and experience. You transfer little poems you breathed of him your last time in the garden. Ink written with the hollow of an invisible tongue. Perhaps, one day, there will be a place, a land where the both of your can be together. You both can catch your dreams and smile without an end. But until then, Ronnie murmurs:

_I’ll wait for you._

Your old bones shift away from that wall. From his beauty resting grinning in the corner reminding you of all the senselessly moving things in life. Like his beam, or his breath and the words he once told you. You’ll never forget an inch of him. You step away, across the room towards the door. You take one last look halfway out of the frame. Across journeys, lives and forgotten time; ashes, dust, bones, the earth and the sand sifting between the cracks of your fingers. You’ve never known a thing for certain except one thing which you say now without hesitation. 

“I love you.”

With that, you shut the door. But he hangs on your mind like the kisses he laid on your forehead or how soft his movements were as he tucked a lock of your chestnut hair behind your ear. He’d cup your jaw and bring your eyes to greet his. The edges would twinkle with something that made you catch your breath. The universe covets and wanes around your form. You sink into his open arms where you belong and your cheek presses to his heartbeat through the flesh. Your eyes shut and he is muttering into your hair:

_“I’ve got you, Jacky.”_

Ronnie Peterson is something to wait a lifetime for. 

The comforting pale of lightening that comes with every frightening storm. 

But you’ve never been afraid of a little thunder. 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this actually a reallyyyy long time ago but I never got around to publishing it! I hope you enjoyed! Please support your creators and leave a comment :) I only have one more main fic left in these series to right before I'll classify it as "finished" which is a Ronnie POV fic sorta like I did for Jochen and Francois. My Tumblr is @pieregasly if you need anything!


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